It's official!

It's finally, really, truly summer!

I hope you all had a Summer Solstice filled with good things.

And happy Father's Day!

Poor V, he worked hard in the heat today.

Busy Saturday

I really dislike Saturday mornings. They feel so wasted, at least when we're trying to get the new house ready to move. V and J15 have Tae Kwon Do and Kum Do classes in the morning which essentially takes them out of commission for anything until about noon. I took advantage of the morning by doing my grocery shopping and organizing the latest 'pile' of boxes to move out. We're really doing well on getting things packed. At least I think so. My parents stopped by in the morning and my Dad asked (tongue in cheek at least) when we're starting to move. We've still got lots of furniture to move but we also have lots of empty cabinets and bookshelves.

This will eventually be V's study.

The children have their rooms packed and moved except for the beds, dressers and desks.

V and I also made a quick trip to one of the local home centers and picked up the things we need to finish the upstairs bath, except for the tile for the floor. We got new light fixtures and a vanity/medicine cabinet for the wall. There was only a mirror on the wall and I can't function without a place to put 'stuff' in the bathroom.

Then we got to work. I finished up some painting elsewhere in the house while V disconnected the existing lights/fan in the bath and took down the existing ceiling. What a job!

The upstairs bath- down to the studs and with no ceiling!

V- HOT and sweaty!

We still don't have the air conditioning unit re-connected to the house and it was humid and in the upper 80's today so it was tough working conditions. But behold:

A new bathroom ceiling!!!

Tomorrow we need to make a run to the other home center in town (they have the trim tile we need). Then we will work on framing in a space for the medicine chest and work on putting up the dry wall for the walls. The tile floor will be last and will definitely be easier to do when we finally have lights in the room again.

The garden looks better today. Things have managed to straighten themselves a bit. I did lose a few tomato branches but that's ok- they'll make more. I also spent time today cleaning up the place. With all the work being done there are boxes, packing materials, wiring bits and general messiness that was driving me nuts. So the cardboard all got stacked for recycling and generally straightened up.

So now I'm tired! and tomorrow will be another crazy-busy day.

But at least it's Solstice- the longest day of the year.

Wind and whining

We had a HUGE thunderstorm come through late Friday afternoon. I had just arrived home from work. After it passed we went out to the new house to survey the damage. There must have been one heck of a wind with it out there. My garden is flattened :( and we have a few downed limbs including what looks like about a 6-8 inch oak limb broken off on one of the trees on the hills. Of course it wasn't a clean break and it's still hung up high in the tree. We also had water in the basement :( when we thought we had the leaks plugged. There was even water leaking in from a place that hadn't leaked before. (sigh)

In other whining news- we had a message from our insurance agent. When we bought the acreage, we explained the plan to her and she was fine with it. But evidently 'corporate' has figured out that we have two homeowner's policies and are pressuring us for a definite date we will make the new house our 'primary residence'. They are likely to issue us with a deadline. Grrr! I don't see why they should care- we're giving them their money.

So, we're planning to do a blitz to try to finish the upstairs bath this weekend. If all else fails J15 can sleep upstairs for a while until we get her room finished if they end up putting too much pressure on us. We figured that if we had another week where neither of us was working and we could spend all our time working on the house, we could be ready. But, I've already taken lots of time off and V has a big writing project that he has to have researched and finished by July 2 (for a July 3 site launch date).

You may not be 'seeing' much of me for a while depending on what comes down. We already know that we have a July 21 deadline for moving- that's one of the stipulations of our mortgage- We have 90 days from closing to be in. It's creeping up faster than the weeds in the garden.

Anything to eat around here?

I'm posting today on meal planning over at Homemakers Who Work. Come on over!

Garden confessions

Time for confessions. My garden is a mess! Someone please remind me why I chose to even plant a garden this year with all the house mess going on... oh yeah, I love it. And I love having the food and preserving it to feed my family. But it's a weedy mess. There is some good news though:

Tiny beans popping up after the rain (surrounded by weeds)

We had huge storms come though early this morning and again around lunch time. We ended up getting about an inch of rain. But it cleared off nicely (although it got HOT) I did do a little weeding this evening, trying to rediscover my tomatoes.

Here, we'll have some fun:

Try to spot the tomatoes!!!

They are in there. I pulled the largest weeds around about a third of them last night and another third tonight. The final third wasn't quite as bad as I had weeded them about a week ago. These weeds grow so fast! and there are so many of them!!! I still need to go through and get out the grass that is coming up but at least the tomatoes are now taller than the surrounding weeds.

But it's amazing what you can find when you weed.

I found that I have some little tomatoes set on my cherry roma tomatoes. They are an heirloom variety of grape tomatoes and Oh, so tasty.

Garden update mid june

After work tonight K and I went out to the house to work in the garden before dinner. We would have all gone out but V and I12 had been out there working all afternoon and V had to be home for a conference call about work at 530. I got a good hour weeding in before we needed to head home. I managed to find some of the tomatoes in the weeds. I can hardly tell that I have ever weeded, even though I know that it was all done not that long ago. The garden is being taken over by nightshade, pigweed and smartweed. They seem to grow so much more quickly than the veggies.

K9 was excited to help harvest.

He found the giant radish (which he probably won't eat)

Lettuce and chard looking lovely.

The only plant with peppers set on- one of the 'mystery' hot peppers.

But oh, the weeds!

The photo above was taken in the area I just weeded and worked for planting my beans over the weekend. Already hundreds of tiny weed seedlings up.

Whoosh, at the rate they grow they'll be towering before you know it. sigh. Someday I'll be on top of the weeding- maybe.

Independence Days- take 2: week 7

Whew! What a week. It seems like time has been flying by and it's time for another IDC update already. It's been busy but sometimes I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. Oh, I know that every little bit gets us closer to our goal but I'm impatient and want everything ready NOW.

Here's my update for the week.

1. Plant something- Hmm, lets see, sweet corn -one freebie variety and then I planted 4 rows of Bloody Butcher corn. You can eat it fresh for sweet corn or let it mature for grinding. It has these fabulous red kernels! Beans (scarlet runners, Christmas limas, green, yellow wax and purple pods), cilantro, cucumbers (way late!!!) and transplanted little dill seedlings from my Mom.

2. Harvest something- lettuce, chard, mustard greens, radishes. I've pretty much given up hope for the peas but maybe once I get the fence up I can get enough for one meal... maybe. I've never tried to plant peas as a fall crop, has anyone else? I was really hoping to get some for the freezer and I have a bit of seed left- so maybe I'll experiment this year. I should have a bit more time by then- I hope.

3. Preserve something- No.

4. Reduce waste- just the usuals. We missed our regular garbage pick up last week in town so actually have a full barrel! That is something of a rarity here. Of course, we have also been pitching a lot of accumulated garbage. I have still been scavenging boxes from work. We're just about there with packing. Most of what's left are things that we are actively using (well, we haven't really started cleaning out the garage yet). We've still got our old video tapes down in the basement but again, V has train stuff on the shelves in front of them so I'm not packing them until it's gone.

5. Prep and storage- still working on the house. I've been trying to figure out where things will go. I've got more cabinet space in the kitchen than I've ever had so it's kind of fun. Unfortunately none of the storage spaces in the basement are finished- the bathroom is the only finished room down there so we have lots of things stacked all over the place upstairs. The room that will be V's study is particularly stacked tall. I'm almost dreading unpacking more than I did packing. I did get the last of my empty canning jars moved out yesterday and I only have a few full jars on the shelves here.

6. Build community food systems- Can't think of anything this week. I didn't even get to the farmer's market. Oh, wait, I bought locally produced yogurt (I had some for lunch with strawberries today - YUM!)

7. Eat the food. We've had home produced salads and I've had a couple of radish sandwiches (bread, butter and sliced radishes, Mmmm). Been trying to eat mostly from stores but as we've been busier, I've noticed that I've been slacking on my usual cooking from scratch. Oh well, we've gotta eat!

I didn't get out of work soon enough to make it to the animal shelter this afternoon (they close at 530) but we did go check out another rescue organization in town. We were able to talk to the woman in charge but they didn't have any animals there at the moment. They are in the process of moving their facility and are still remodeling the new space. But she said they have several cats who do well with dogs- unfortunately they both sound older than what J was hoping for. We were okay with not being able to get our hearts set on a cat since we're not really ready to adopt yet. But I'm seriously hoping a cat will help with the mouse problem. We thought we had most of the spots where they were getting in sealed up- but evidently not. I found some mouse droppings in one of the kitchen drawers on Saturday (I've been reluctant to put anything in those drawers- they seemed to have been a mouse hot spot) so we set some traps last night. V said there were two mice caught under the kitchen sink last night. Grrr. We only caught 2 the entire first month we were there- before we had the holes plugged! (sigh) They must have figured out that there are interesting things inside again. I'm going to have to give serious thought to mouse-proof food storage. I'll have to look for some large tubs or tins for things like rice and pastas. I don't think we'll ever be able to totally eliminate them but I'll be happy if we can at least keep them under decent control. We're worried that there are enough problems with the siding that we won't get the problem under real control until we replace/repair it. The term 'money pit' is still ringing loudly in our ears.

And now, it's nearing the time that I turn into a pumpkin. I was over-tired and didn't sleep well last night so now I'm paying the price.

I feel like I've been rambling for what should have been a straightforward update. Oh well, that happens when I get tired.